Fur and Feathers
by CampionSayn
Summary: This is their history—but with everything all mixed up to crash into each other. One-shot, platonic Jeremy/Brisby.


Title: Fur and Feathers  
Summary: This is their history—but with everything all mixed up to crash into each other. One-shot, platonic Jeremy/Brisby.  
Disclaimer: I don't own the Secret of NIHM, the characters or the franchise and make no money from writing this.  
Warning: Inter-species relations, but in a most platonic way. This is rated 'Teen' because in my head the minor fight scene was much more violent. Also, for the sake of this fic, the second movie never happened—I don't like what Mrs. Brisby looked like in it or what they did to Don Bluth's vision.  
Dedication: To **Warm Regards**, that fine person who left the nicest review for my other NIHM fic, with helpful points and considerations of the characters. This one-shot has nothing to do with the other NIHM fics of mine, so yay to prompt-entailing interests.

* * *

_-:-  
…Lift you up and fly away with you into the night.  
-Crash and Burn, by Savage Garden._

* * *

I.

She didn't know where her mind was when the shadow descended on her like a shroud of attempted murder and another shadow shattered into it so hard behind her that, when she turned around to see what was happening, the wind of the backlash knocked her down upon the chicory clump she was fiddling around to rip up some herb bits for her lunch. Her back felt pinched and ugly-pained when she hit the ground, but she could barely notice while most of her senses were paying attention to the sight of a large brown bird fighting with Jeremy up and down along the scented plants of the garden. She let out a little whimper when their beaks pecked into the others neck and drew blood as well as feathers that fell to earth or onto the flowers they broke against.

Not remembering (_not really caring about_) the little silk bag she had dropped full of the plants she had already picked, Mrs. Brisby took off into the high grass, just under where Jeremy and the bird of prey continued to fight and the more-so when she couldn't see them anymore.

When she reached the edge of the shade where coolness mingled to keep out the warmth of the approaching summer, the bird of prey took off back into the skies towards the forests it had doubtless come from. One of Jeremy's many strings (_he still collected them all through the year, always, some tied around his neck in bundles every day_) was knotted around his left ankle like Jeremy had used it as a weapon and then given up…

"Jeremy! Jeremy where are you?" The brown lady mouse called, the pock marked red cloak she always wore trailing behind her as she rushed into the place he'd crashed, running on all fours making her less winded than two legs would have as she neared a shaking rustle of the plants that he must have landed in.

"Mrs. B? Are you alright?"

She leapt up onto the shaking tremble of some accumulated plant debris (_something that once might have had aspirations to be a flower brush but died too soon, heaps of the scented plants that covered the garden patch every summer lying within its clutches almost like the beginnings of a nest, Jeremy's gangly legs the only things visible to her as the mouse stopped first to look and be glad he was alive_) with a stark inhalation of breath. He was alive indeed; on his back with some of the enemy's feathers sticking to his beak with blood and spit, the almost sad excuse for talons on his own feet marked with the same debris.

He hesitated to get up for some reason, so she was very gentle when she leapt over to him in examination, but less so with her words as she chastised his rash behavior.

Her frail hands ran over a new mark in his right wing where enemy talons had raked into skin and, perhaps, bone, the hair on her back raising up when she pulled a hand back and found blood, "What on earth were you thinking, flying into a fight like that?"

"Ha!" The crow cackled (_it strangled in his throat for a moment as the lady mouse took some of the strings from around his neck—little, tiny figure like a breeze swooping around him as he took a deep red string he'd pulled from the braid of a rather annoyed horse, as well as a chartreuse ribbon that had been stuck around the fine stick of a tree—and started wrapping his injury_) in good humor, to show no fear, "I couldn't just let you get eaten now, could I?"

"What was that?" She asked, ears facing downward with her senses on high so he wouldn't have to fight again if that other bird came back. Better to run than fight again.

Jeremy kicked out his leg and his beak clicked shut hard when Mrs. Brisby tied off the strings to staunch his bleeding, "That was a hawk, Miss Bris'. It would have eaten you if I hadn't attacked it first. Couldn't have that, now could we?"

"Oh, you silly bird…" she huffed, pleasant and light, getting behind him to press her arms into his shoulders and help him up and into a bit of a swayed standing position, "I…thank you. I just wish you'd have cried out first, before rushing in."

"Hey, birds fight for the things they want," he smiled lightly, eyes tightening in an attempt not to cry in pain as Mrs. Brisby sidled under his good wing so she could lead him back to her home where she had more healing products available; one loose feather flitted out and getting stuck into her cloak near her tail.

* * *

II.

"You want me to what-what?"

Mrs. Brisby rubbed her bangs out of her eyes and continued her slightly alert approach from the Fitzgibbons's farmhouse where the very large animals were kept so they didn't run off unless the Fitzgibbons' wanted them to run off and get fat off of the grass the mice of the area had a hard time maneuvering about. Jeremy hopped about behind her, making far more noise than she would like, but after being around him for over a year she had gotten used to it.

In her arms was a little sack of the feed that usually dropped from the bags that the cows and horses ate from during their breakfast (_wheat, oddly rice looking curdles, oats; the sack something of an improvisation between a piece of balloon rubber and felt_) that would serve for herself an excellent breakfast for the a few days. Jeremy was carrying, for her, a baby-bottle rubber nipple with the hole sealed, filled with milk from one of the cows nice enough to hold still for the mouse in exchange for Jeremy eating the flies that were buzzing around all of the livestock in the barn (_something he would have done anyway, but was glad enough to use it in exchange for leeway directed towards Mrs. Brisby_).

"I was wondering," Brisby tried again, not stuttering this time in minor embarrassment of how her question must have sounded before, "If you would stay with me tonight? I'll feed you dinner."

The string around his throat rode up along the metal of the ring held in the center of it (_a piece of jewelry she'd given him that looked like it had once been the heart twined into the steel of a pinky ring jangling on the end of another string_) as he followed her around the big stone in the garden that had been looking more and more beautiful as the place where her home used to be was starting to grow clover and little flower seedlings. He hopped over a small collection of stones that her children had left in memoriam of their father before they left together for Thorn Valley and considered his answer while trying to ignore the blush under his eyes around his beak.

"Uh," he hesitated as she opened the door to her house, holding it wide as he stooped and moved in, wings tucked and tightened around the milk carrier. "Is something the matter, Miss Bris'?"

The lady mouse shrugged, shutting the door and dropped the bag of grain-stuff on her kitchen table near the grinding bowl full of crushed turnips she hadn't made to put in her soup bowl yet; she would mix them with some of the barley and oats along with powdered spinach and broth later. Her eyes directed the crow to set the milk in the large bowl on the counter that was about the size of his head and she quite often used to mix the ingredients for bread or cookies. He set the rubber carrier in that bowl and sat down on her rug (a gift that Martin and Tim had made; all yellow and brown) to stay out of her way.

"Nothing's the matter," she smiled, bright eyes squinting a little into the little crate kept in the far corner of the room as she opened and then rummaged about inside for the flint and stone she kept to make a fire in her hearth. "It's just been…quiet. And I noticed…"

He allowed her a moment's pause as she found the fire-makers and moved towards the fireplace itself. She cracked the flint against the stone a few times (_little sparks lighting onto the tiny bits of paper she often took from the trash the Fitzgibbon boy threw out after a school assignment, smoke curling up through the chimney as the sticks from the rosebush he'd gathered for her himself earlier the day before breathed in the flames_) and once the heat took to flame she turned back to make lunch as well as dinner simultaneously, and talking to him as well. She continued to speak as well; despite that watching her was good enough for him.

"That you have been sleeping out in the open a lot lately."

"Ah," he looked bashful at that, shoulders rising and his demeanor timid, "Well, you see… I've really been meaning to make a new nest since the other one got taken away by the Fitzgibbon kid…but, well I keep getting distracted."

"By those new lady birds that have settled in the thicket?" She questioned, smiling and trying not to show her own disapproval at the thought of him making a mate out of one (or heaven forbid all) of those noisy new crows that more often than not, on occasion, swooped down to tease or frighten her if she wasn't around. She didn't like the thought of her friend mixing in with those birds.

Jeremy blinked at his friend, for a moment. And then he let out a raucous laugh, shaking his head at the mere idea of those mentioned crows from the Southlands, "Oh, no, no, no! Miss Bris', I may want a mate, but, no. I just mean that I've been distracted."

Brisby poured some of the milk into the soup pot and then followed that by the barley and the turnips, but kept her eyes on the crow on her rug, "Yes, but by what?"

Jeremy opened his mouth a couple times, eyes roving over the kitchen and Miss Bris' herself before kind of just rolling his shoulders and crossing his arms to let out the best answer he could come up with, "Manly stuff."

Some of the turnips made a heavy, burbling pop as they landed into the pot after that little statement, Mrs. Brisby giving him that sort of look she often did when she was deciding whether to act more like his friend or his matriarch.

Rather than allow her to say something to that pathetic little statement, however, he simple humbled himself and pretended to preen his neck, "But, anyway, sure I'll stay the night. In the morning I can take you out to the meadow three miles south and help you look for roots in exchange. I'd hate to get something for nothing when you're being so kind."

"Jeremy, I didn't invite you to stay in exchange for something," she corrected, wiping her hands on a rag hanging on a nail from the wall for the exact purpose of either wiping hands or holding something so hot that otherwise, if held by hand, would burn skin, "I just want you to stay so Dragon doesn't try and eat you."

He would have made to correct her at that. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but she had a point and he was grateful.

So, for the moment, he would shut up and preen and pluck his molting feathers. Maybe he could give her his stray black plumage for thanks for the meal. If he recalled, she'd lost quite a few pillows to water and mud damage while moving her house and was still trying to replace the ones lost.


End file.
